A Scout Is … Queer?

Well, you won’t find it among the characteristics listed on the Scout Law. But, yeah, in my case a scout is queer.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the National Eagle Scout Association. (Yes, I’m an Eagle Scout.) I either ignored it or forgot about. But they didn’t forget about me. I got this in my inbox this afternoon.

The National Eagle Scout Association recently authorized the National Eagle Scout Search Project which will culminate in the publication of the Eagle Scout Roll of Honor. Roll of Honor will be the first-ever registration and publication of its kind - capturing nearly 100 years of Eagle Scout history, tradition, service and achievement.

Oh geez. Now I’ve got a dilemma.

See, the Boy Scouts aren’t all that keen on queers.

On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of the Boy Scouts of America having the constitutional right to exclude gay people. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist interpreted the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of association to mean that the Supreme Court could not force one of America’s most treasured institutions “to accept members where such acceptance would derogate from the organization’s expressive message,” thus overturning last year’s New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that the Scouts had violated the state law banning anti-gay discrimination.

They say so right on their legal issues website.

In the time I was an active Boy Scout, I served as a Patrol Leader, Senior Patrol Leader, and (briefly, before going off to college) Junior Assistant Scoutmaster. I was out by then, to myself and to most of my classmates at school. But not to the Scouts (even though I’m sure most of the guys in my troop knew). I knew what the official response would be. Plus, my Dad was the assistant scoutmaster, whom I once heard say “A boy who doesn’t want to be in scouting shouldn’t be in scouting,” only to forbid me to quit when I told him I wanted to. (The cognitive dissonance was starting to become suffocating.)

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